In 1993, New York City had similar numbers of misdemeanor arrests, felony
arrests, and criminal court summonses. In the twenty years since then,
felony arrests have declined by thirty percent, misdemeanor arrests have
increased by eighty-three percent, but the number of criminal court
summonses has more than tripled. By 2012, there were twice as many criminal
court summonses as misdemeanor arrests, and nearly six times as many
summonses as felony arrests.

Like New York City's large number of marijuana
possession arrests, these “quality of life”
summonses are fruit of the City's aggressive policing of some but not all
neighborhoods.
Although unknown to most middle-class and white New Yorkers, summonses are a
familiar part of life for the people in New York City's predominately black
and Latino neighborhoods.

Few people understand much about the large number of summonses given out or
how the
summons system works. Many people issued a summons think they are comparable
to
automobile tickets. But the summonses have more serious consequences than
most routinetraffic offenses. And they are handled by an entirely different court system
– a subsection of the New York Criminal Court.

The summonses require that people show up at
the criminal court on a specific date to pay a fine. In 2009 and 2010, the
third most frequently issued summons was for riding a bike on the sidewalk.
Because the summonses are given out most heavily in low-income
neighborhoods, white middle-class parents may not even be aware that
teenagers can get a summons for riding a bike on a sidewalk.

In New York City's public housing
developments, however, the tickets are so common that teenagers from poor
and working-class families will beg police officers to give them a summons
for having an open alcohol container rather than a ticket for a bike on the
sidewalk. Why? Because the fine for an alcohol container summons is $25 but
the bike summons is $100. The teenagers who live in the City's housing
projects have a chance of raising $25 to a pay a fine, but they usually
cannot get $100 from their families to pay a criminal court fine for a
summons.

Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin
(Robert Wisdom) comes to the podium to address the roll call of his cops.
The night before one of his cops -- Patrol Officer Kenneth Dozerman -- had
been shot while sitting in his unmarked car during a buy and bust to get
three small vials of a drug. The cops at roll call don't know it, but
Major Colvin is about to announce that he is ordering his troops not to
arrest anyone for possessing or handing off a small amount of drugs.

Major Colvin puts a capped
bottle of beer on one side of his podium, and a small upright brown paper
bag on the other side, so all can see. He begins: :

"Somewheres back in the dawn
of time, this district had itself a civic dilemma of epic proportion. The
city council had just passed a law that forbid alcoholic consumption in
public places, on the streets and on the corners. But the corner is, and it
was, and it always will be the poor man's lounge. It's where a man wants to
be on a hot summer's night. It's cheaper than a bar, you catch a nice
breeze, you watch the girls go by.

"But, the law is the law. The
Western [district] cops rolling by, what were they gonna do? If they
arrested every dude out there for tippin back a Hi Life, there'd no other
time for any other kind of police work. And if they looked the other way,
they'd open themselves to all kinds of flaunting, all kind of disrespect.

"Now this is before my time
when it happened but, somewhere back in the fifties or sixties, there was a
small moment of god damn genius by some nameless smoke hound who comes out
of the Cut Rate one day. And on his way to the corner he slips that
just-bought pint of elderberry into a paper bag. A great moment of civic
compromise."

That small wrinkle-ass paper
bag allowed the corner boys to have their drink in peace. And it gave us
permission to go and do police work -- the kind of police work that is
actually worth the effort, that's worth actually taking a bullet for them.

Dozerman, he got shot last
night trying to buy three vials, three! There's never been a paper bag for
drugs, until now.

-------

Next scene: Officers Carver
and Herc, assigned to Colvin's district, are sitting in their police car on
the street where drug purchases of a few vials are happening.

Herc: "If we aint doin
hand-to-hands, then what the fuck. And this shit with the bag? What the
fuck is that?"

Carver and Herc

_________________________________________________

The story of bunny Colvin
is beautifully told with a poetic and metaphoral truth -- but it is
historically inaccurate. The custom of not arresting people who had a beer can or
bottle in a brown paper bag developed in the U.S. in the years following the
repeal of national alcohol prohibition in 1933 and 1934. It was respectd by
police departments
throughout the U.S. in big cities and small villages until about the
1990s. As best as we have been able to determine, police in New
York City under Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bratton began issuing
criminal court summonses in large numbers for people possessing a beer can
or bottle in a
paper bag. Other police departments soon followed the NYPD's lead. In short,
for sixty years - from about 1930 until about 1994 - the paper bag custom
was respected by police. And then it was not. And it was enforced then and
to this day primarily against low-income people, especially blacks and
Latinos.

======================================================

WE ARE STILL IN THE PROCESS OF COLLECTING AND COMPILING INFORMATION ABOUT
SUMMONSES AND EXPECT TO RELEASE A NEW REPORT SOMETIME IN THE MONTH.